


want you to notice, when i'm not around

by epeolotry



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, not climax compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 16:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8586184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epeolotry/pseuds/epeolotry
Summary: "Porpentina - always going where you're not wanted."
It stings like a slap and he knows it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for fantastic beasts.  
> this operates under the assumption that Percival Graves is who he says he is at face-value. so...basically canon, sans the contrived Johnny Depp shaped plot twist.
> 
> title from [Scala & Kolacny Brothers's Creep cover.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axrqVfuGHh0)

The first time she walks back into the Auror Department with Scamander in tow, it is his gimlet-eyed gaze she seeks out first. She looks to him wearily, eyes ringed with darkness meeting their sharper counterparts. She looks to him in silent beseechment, because she knows she can rely on him, more than anyone else.

In their unsure world on the cusp of change, she always reaches out and grasps him by the tips of her fingers, as steady a constant she’d ever be able to find, with so many boundaries shifting and lines being drawn, people leaving her, people dying, people swallowed up by the ebb and flow of the changing tides.  

And he? He is always shaking her loose. Shying from her touch, as if burnt, as if _spooked_. The thinnest of threads slipping from her fingers as she grasps desperately outward. 

She thinks he is afraid. He is afraid of the weight of her against him when the weight of the changing world bears down on him so hard that he is scarcely able to hold it up without falling to his knees and letting it crash or letting it burn. So, she is a distraction. A shade. 

 

But he cannot for the life of him, _truly_ lose her. Somehow, he is always drawn inexorably backward, a fleeing, unraveling spool of thread caught in reverse and spun back, back into her grasp, looping around her delicate fingers. 

(“Piano fingers,” he says thoughtfully, one night when they are alone in the offices after celebrating his promotion. His breath is heavy with liquor, his hand closing around her thin wrist. Before she can protest, he kisses the pads of each one of her fingers with an uncharacteristic gentleness. She simply stares. Then rests them on his lips before drawing them back to hers, trying to hide how they tremble. Waiting, watching, wanting.)  

 

Because they are mirror images moving in tandem. An object and its shadow. They fall into a pattern, a delicate repetition, a one two, one two. Forward and back. 

A dance. 

 

He skirts the alleys near New Salem, she steps into the ground itself, walking between the pews. She reaches out to Credence, he draws him into his arms. He sees the belt, she throws it aside. Her fingers close around the charm of her necklace. It is a cold heart looped around her neck like a millstone. He clutches the symbol around his neck as a reminder, holding it so tight that it leaves indentations in his palm. It is a sharp triangle and it cuts into his flesh.

 

When they finally face each other, she curses, he casts - a bolt of silver from each of their wands. _Mirrors_. 

He pushes forward, she steadies herself as she steps back, gravel rasping at their feet at a rhythm. _A dance._

(It is her first time at the Blind Pig. They are undercover and she is young, drunk, and in love. There are only slivers of grey in his hair now. “I didn’t know you could,” she hums into his shoulder, body pressed flush against his. “Dance, I mean.” Her lips shake from the motion when his body quivers with laughter. Guided by him, they continue to sway languidly to the music, hands clasped together. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t know you could look so beautiful in this dress.” Eyes on her, lips at the shell of her ear, in a manner so distinctly his - always making her feel as if it was only he and she alone in a room, he murmurs, “You clean up nice, Tina.”)

 

She looks to him, seeking assurance, pulling him to her - _Graves, take a look at this - Graves, listen to me - Graves, **stop**. _

 

He always looks back, gazing in admonishment, the unspooling thread pulling away - _take a step back, Goldstein - stay away from Scamander, Tina - **Porpentina, always going where you’re not wanted.**_

 

It stings like a slap and he knows it. More than any hex he could've flung. 

She is not wanted. Not by her government, not by many a man or woman. And as he bites out, not by him.  

And yet, she knows better.

She knows when she twines the escaping thread back around her fingers, finally draws his lips to her mouth, tongue past teeth —  as the fullness of sound is wont to do when it meets something hollow, the echo of her desire reverberates within him again and again and again, until it hits something solid in his chest. Warm, soft, weak. They are mirrors once more. Mirrors, always. 

 

Because you see, only similar objects could repel each other so fiercely in the end. 

 

 


End file.
